Experience is elusive. Mindful of its gossamer caprices, John Saul sets short stories as snares in an attempt to capture it, cupping it gently in his hands, before setting it free again.

Underpinning his approach is a tacit understanding that the reader is receptive to art, and, to a certain extent, well-versed in it. In The Book of Joys, his protagonists share this defining characteristic, as well as lives of limited constraint, able to indulge themselves in the whims of their fancy without the encumbrance of financial baggage.  

Interpolating the prose, the paintings of Albert Irvin, bright and busy abstracts, are very much part and parcel of this overall conceit. They are pieces his protagonists would make much of, divining in them the arc of a narrative over which to plot the course of their lives.  

For me, Saul‘s stories are at their most effective when the curvature of such arcs is described by the compass points of clearly-defined human relationships. Art: A Biography, perhaps the most conventional piece in the collection, strikes a fine balance between tracking the parabola of two women’s meteoric affair, and the Seurat painting that attracts their attentions in the first place. In the flush of their mutual enthusiasm, they look in the opposite direction of the inauspicious presentiment of a work that the artist died while hanging, in the process mistaking knowledge for intimacy. Only in the less flattering light of disenchantment do they see one another with clarity. 

Here, as elsewhere, Saul uses art as other writers might reference pop songs; as biographical markers of his protagonists’ inner lives, albeit ones with less universal resonance.  

For all that the human element makes for a more lasting effect, it’s admittedly the case that Saul’s less straightforward pieces, at their best, have the giddy pleasure of stepping onto an already moving merry-go-round. The multiple rotations of Make That Cake splice the grammar of the ever faster cutting of film-making with something akin to the cultural journalism of Paul Morley, juxtaposing film actors Lillian Gish and Julianne Moore, almost a century apart, while whipping up a slapstick fight between composers Philip Glass and Ludovici Einaudi. Its showboating audacity is a joy that does not wholly depend on recognising Einaudi’s name.  

Where Saul excels is in his evocation of flux, the moment-to-moment inconstancies of waking life and how the butterfly quiver of the ripples they generate is the undertow in life’s more sweeping tides. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the metaphor of water, its flow and permeability, when, with the critic’s sieve, one attempts to sift out the words to distil his essence. In the attempt, of course, one mirrors one of his protagonists, seeking connection in the context of literary art. More abstract than pop, Saul’s word paintings reward the attention they require. 

By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent

 

The Book of Joys by John Saul with Albert Irvin, published by Confingo, is available to buy now